UNEP's Executive Director
at B4E Summit

Singapore, 22 April 2008

We meet here in Singapore for the B4E after 12 months of quite extraordinary developments in terms of climate change and the global response.

In December last year, governments set aside- in quite dramatic ways- narrow national differences in agreeing the Bali Road Map. This is the two year negotiation to realize a deep and decisive climate regime by the climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009.

There are many milestones on this route. The meeting in Singapore this week is one of them. It needs to make a contribution to both the greenhouse gas cutting agenda, but also the adaptation one too. For while a path has been laid out for emissions reductions, we know that even our best efforts will still lead to some measure of climate impacts which will fall hardest on the most vulnerable economies and communities.

The ultimate goal and prize is delivering Green Growth and Green Economies that fundamentally shift the way we all produce and consume the Earth's natural resources from a wasteful path to one that is sustainable.

The greening of growth that is now emerging is being propelled by the existing climate agreement and by the prospective of even tighter rules and regulations on carbon-based pollution. Driven too by the continuing evidence from scientists, not just on climate change but also on the wider range of sustainability challenges from ever diminishing fish stocks to loss of top soils and biodiversity.

Green Growth and Green Creativity are also emerging in the financial markets and via new and innovative market mechanisms. Indeed the mobilization of finance in order to meet the climate challenge is also a new and defining development of the past 12 months or so. The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol may deliver up to a $100 billion of investment into cleaner energy and forestry projects in developing countries.

Indeed, if we had a breakthrough in Bali then we also need a breakthrough in Bonn, Germany, next month at the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting. For while we may be turning the corner on climate change the same cannot be said for biodiversity and the economically important ecosystems of which it is an integral part. Perhaps some of the emerging market mechanisms in relation to energy and climate could be applied to the world's nature-based assets.

We also have the emerging phenomenon of Green Jobs. UNEP is compiling research on this in collaboration with International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Congress of Trades Unions (ICTU). Currently there are now more people employed in the renewable energy industries than in the oil and gas industry - 2.3 million versus 2 million.

The UN itself is part of the transformation. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has not only made climate change among his priority issues, but has also initiated action on greening the institution.

Last year, heads of UN agencies and programmes including UNEP adopted a decision to work towards climate neutrality. The UN spends about $15 billion a year, meaning that such a move can have important repercussions on the greening of national and regional economies.

We are also witnessing the mobilization of all sectors of society. Let me mention the Billion Tree Campaign, which has surpassed all our initial expectations with now over two billion trees planted. We have now set our sights even higher with the aim of planting over six billion trees, one for each person alive on the planet by the climate convention meeting in 2009.

The question is will all this formal and voluntary activity persist and become embedded in the economic development paths of all countries over the coming few crucial years.

There is every chance that the transformations underway are possible in the short, medium to long-term but this is not guaranteed. There are still many hills to climb and hurdles to leap-frog.

In February, UNEP hosted its annual gathering of environment ministers at our Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum in the Principality of Monaco with the Green Economy and the challenges to fully realizing it central to the debates. Several key papers outlined some of the current institutional barriers but also some of the benefits that may arise by breaking those down. Let me cite a few.

Subsidies
Currently, fossil fuel subsidies amount up to $200 billion a year versus support for low-carbon technologies of an estimated $33 billion annually. Removing fossil fuel subsidies could reduce C02 emissions by five to six per cent annually.

R+D
Currently the pace of investment in research and development is insufficient. The International Energy Agency estimates that R+D for low emission innovations such as renewables and energy savings declined by 50 per cent between 1980 and 2004.

In order to achieve a C02 stabilization target of 550 parts per million, support for innovation needs to rise from just over $30 billion to $90 billion by 2015 and to $160 billion by 2025 according to some experts.

Energy Savings
Over recent years, advances and investments in energy savings in transport and power generation, industry and households, have been reducing the intensity of energy used by 1 to 1.5 per cent a year. Experts say, if the annual rate of improvement in energy efficiency could be doubled to 2.5 per cent worldwide, it might be possible to keep carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere below 550 parts per million (ppm) through the end of the century. These should be supported by policies including stronger energy savings building codes for new and existing structures; penalties or disincentives for builders to choose the cheapest, least energy efficient designs, materials and gadgets.

Other actions could include policies that promote mass transit especially rail and international minimum performance standards for industrial and household appliances. Other measures include the promotion of utility pricing that favours energy efficiency; promotes combined heat and power and improves energy savings in existing power plants and electricity transmission infrastructure.

Renewables
Policies that increase the uptake of renewables may include 'feed-in laws' that guarantee a fixed price for each unit of renewable electricity generated alongside regulations that boost access to the Grid. Government agencies and donors need to develop and deploy new forms of 'end-user' credit schemes to assist consumers to purchase climate mitigation technologies and systems.

The private sector is moving down the Bali Road Map. It is time to accelerate that mobilization. Here in Singapore is a good time. Your contribution to building a global atmosphere of confidence in the art of the possible will play a central role in empowering political leaders to meet the deadline of 2009 and assist in putting in place a new regime, operational post-2012.

The alternative is unconscionable and made clear from the latest assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change established by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organisation. From the melting away of the Himalayan glaciers to the loss of up to a third of the infrastructure of the African coastline, the prospects for business; for communities and for the poor and the vulnerable are indeed bleak.

Indeed, the boom and bust cycles of the past will to my mind be as nothing to those of the near future in a climate constrained world. These will be some of the heavy costs of inaction. But what of the costs of action? The IPCC estimates these at perhaps 0.1 or 0.2 of one per cent of global GDP a year for 30 years.

This is an average: Different economies will benefit or bear the burden in differing ways. This is among the challenges that could lead to detours and dead ends during the path along the Road Map. One of the central achievements of Bali was that both developed and developing countries acknowledged that climate change is everyone's challenges and everyone's opportunity.

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